Thursday, May 10, 2012

An inconvenient Jew: Dr. Bernard Nathanson

Anyone who's studied Satan as much as I have can recognize his tricks. One of his favorites is also the pop theme of our time: we are the captains of our lives. Yet, as Dr. Nathanson's story shows, human beings are infinitely surprising in their capacity for going off the Satanic reservation.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, 1926-2011, was not your average atheistic Jewish abortionist. While it's pretty much a given that most of the abortionists you run across are atheistic Jews, not all of them repent, disavow their former ways, become vocal anti-abortionists; and to top it off... convert to Catholicism. Dr. Nathanson was by any standard a very unusual man - and an inconvenient Jew.

Nathanson was one of the founding fathers of NARAL, the National Abortion Rights Action Leage. Years later this would prove helpful when he explained how NARAL conjured numbers out of thin air in order to advance the abortion agenda, issuing statements such as, "Ten thousand American women a year die from 'back alley' abortions." In truth, they knew the number was only about 300. Abortionists might reply, "even one woman dying in a back alley abortion is too many." That's debatable, but the point is that a fundamental fraud was afoot. If you apply for a loan claiming $10,000 in assets, when in truth you have only $300, you've committed fraud. The mainstream media generally broadcast NARAL propaganda without question.

There were other tricks as well: the attempted suppression of the fact that a human life begins at conception.... Fabricating poll numbers.... One of NARAL's favored tactics was to paint the anti-abortion movement as a mass of isolated, reactionary old Catholics: wizened, celibate priests who knew nothing about the real world, a world of women in great emotional distress. The argument worked. Anti-Catholic types jumped on the bandwagon with both feet. Even many Catholics bought into it. To be honest they were pale Catholics to begin with (but then most Catholics are pretty pale). The msm, in a mechanical formula that's now familiar to everyone, churned out sob story after sob story of "women caught between their inability to support an unwanted child and the intransigence of the reactionary Catholic Church."

Years later, after the introduction of ultrasound technology, Dr. Nathanson was able to see an actual abortion being done. What he saw, the fetus desperately recoiling from the suction curette, horrified him. He eventually repented and recanted his earlier pro-abortionism. A few years later he took that video and made a documentary called The Silent Scream - one of the most powerful anti-abortion arguments ever produced. Dr. Nathanson produced another video, The Eclipse of Reason, with Charlton Heston and also wrote a landmark book on the matter, Aborting America; as well as a book about his spiritual journey from pro-abortionist Jew, to anti-abortionist Catholic. Once, while debating the pro-abortionist Jew Dr. Henry Morgentaler on Canadian TV, Nathanson responded, "Henry, I have to laugh when I hear you throwing those arguments and numbers at me. I'm the one who invented them!"

His Catholicism was a germinative process. Basically he showed up one day and told a priest he was friendly with that he wanted to become a Catholic. Some said that he wanted to get into some of that Christian money. However, while there are $billions to be raked in by the abortion industry, there is no money to be had in opposing abortion. So that argument is a bucket without sides. When asked why he converted, he stated, "No religion matches the special role for forgiveness that is afforded by the Catholic Church."

By all accounts, Dr. Nathanson became a good, unapologetic Catholic. He was troubled by his involvement in killing unborn babies and friends noted how he would undertake long fasts in expiation of his former crimes. Dr. Nathanson died after a long battle with cancer. He was a unique man and it's fitting and proper to say a prayer in his memory and honor.